Monday, April 18, 2011
Interfaith Event at Chapman University April 11, 2011
On April 11, Chapman University in Orange, California held an interfaith dialogue (which they do annually) featuring a representative of Islam, Jihad Turk, and a Jewish rabbi named Zev Hayyim-Feyer. This event was sponsored by the Chapman Muslim Student Association and the Orange County Hillel.
Turk is associated with the Southern California Islamic Center. He is involved with several interfaith activities. The LA Times calls him a moderate- a man of peace if you will. Others say he is a practicioner of takiyya-deception. I do not know enough on Turk to comment.
But it is Rabbi Feyer that I would like to concentrate on here. This is the man who represented the Jewish side at Chapman University.
According to his own website, Feyer is a member of the National Advisory Board of the Jewish Peace Fellowship, the Council of Elders of the Shomer Shalom Institute for Jewish Non-Violence, and the Rabbinic Council of Jewish Voice for Peace.
http://www.new-tzfat.com/bio.php
Jewish Voice For Peace. That is an organization that really should be called Jews for Jihad. They are stridently anti-Israel.
In addition, if you go to the below-linked page of Shomer Shalom Institute for Jewish Non-Violence, you will see that Feyer was a signatory to a letter to Richard Goldstone lauding him for his infamous Goldstone Report condemning Israel for their military actions in Gaza (which Goldstone has now repudiated).
http://shomershalom.org/2010/04/22/rabbis-thank-judge-golstone-for-upholding-principles-of-justice-compassion-and-truth/
Here is another commentary on Feyer's signing of that letter (CalNeoCon).
http://calneocon.typepad.com/blog/2011/04/rabbi-zev-hayyim-feyer-israel-hating-clown-and-hamas-facilitator-endorsed-the-goldstone-blood-libel-.html
Which brings me to my point. The stated purpose of the interfaith dialogue surely was not a debate on Israel. It was to discuss the relationship between Muslims and Jews. Yet, I find it curious that the Orange County Hillel would sponsor this man as the Jewish representative given his apparent hostility toward Israel. To be fair, Hillel is a national organization that exists to help facilitate life on campus for Jewish college students and provide a welcoming Jewish atmosphere. To my knowledge, Israel is at best a secondary issue. Yet, this same Hillel opposed the efforts of the Orange County community to come to UC-Irvine last year to counter the Israel Apartheid Week put on by the UCI Muslim Student Association. This same Hillel is a supporter of the Olive Tree Initiative.
Obviously, Feyer is a peacenik, which is fine. He obviously is not a supporter of Israel, which is fine. It is Hilllel that I am wondering about. As an organization, are they antagonistic toward Israel, or even at a local level in this case, in Orange County? If they are, that is fine. That is their right. If that, in fact, is the case, should they not be open about that?
Perhaps if the Roman Catholic faith were the Established Church here, you would have some basis to insist that anyone with a suspect viewpoint should confess to what that might be.
ReplyDeleteBut, since this is the United States of America, your insinuation that an organization you do not support, which exists within the context of a faith you do not embrace, should issue a communist style self-criticism for sponsoring a speaker with whom you disagree, is so much sound and fury, signifying nothing.
Siarlys,
ReplyDeleteWhat is signifies is that the Chapman event was a stacked deck. And he wants to fight hate speech with love?
That worked great back in olde Nazi Germany, didn't it?
Zev Hayyim-Feyer is another Mark LeVine or Richard Goldstone. There are too many of them and too many who want to turn the other cheek, so to speak. Too many that are so muddle headed that they want to preside over or influence a suicidal process. I imagine that they feel good about themselves and manage somehow to ignore the fact that they are despised by so many.
ReplyDeleteThere is a special punishment for traitors in the military for good reason and this is what these people are.
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Ah, I see that Miggie is aligning himself with those despicable cartoons about Goldstone that Gary posted recently. I always thought that he and the jihadists had a lot in common, just as a Jewish settler in the West Bank was quoted a few years ago saying that he and the jihadist Muslims had more in common with each other than with the secular Jewish Israelis.
ReplyDeleteFighting hate speech with love has a mixed record. Martin Luther King was able to make it work, partly because the federal government found itself obligated by many factors to send in federal marshals and even the army at certain key moments. But, the peaceful nature of the protests were part of the moral pressure on the feds, who by and large were most reluctant to act.
Gandhi's advice to the British and the Jews to march peacefully into Nazi machine gun fire until the latter became morally revulsed and put down their weapons was, to say the least, quite misguided.
What is needed is some application of Sun Tzu's The Art of War. To defeat the military jihadists and advocates of a world wide caliphate, it is essential to drive a wedge between them and the majority of Muslims in the world. That is not accomplished by broadsides denouncing Islam as inherently violent and indelibly determined to establish such a caliphate.
You can win over Muslims, as Muslims, declare war on all billion Muslims in the world, or persuade most Muslims to convert to some other faith, probably Buddhism or Christianity, since Judaism is a non-evangelical faith that does not welcome converts.
I prefer developing ties of friendship, economic interdependence, and citizenship with Muslims, respecting that Islam is their faith, to either of the other options.